Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Revolution- Pilot

The new nerd fare this season is Revolution. We love us some
nerd fare, so we were rooting for this show, but our hopes for stuff like this
are down. We like the premise of this show. Isnt this what was supposed to
happen with Y2K? One of our dads was SUPER prepared for that. We’re talking
warehouse full of freeze-dried food, boat, and guns. Hilarious. We figured
people would be able to make some kind of generator or water wheel to get power
going again, but the show will explain that away by saying, “the laws of
physics have changed.” Suspend belief, people.

So, the show. Elizabeth Mitchell is a good sign.
Apparently, she’s dead, but we wouldn’t mind if it turned out she wasn’t. We
like that it’s not a dark show. We wouldn’t call it “gritty,” and it doesn’t
carry the hopelessness of other post-apocalyptic shows, like The Walking Dead. We
also like that it’s not as cheesy as Terra Nova. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into
a similar “family show.” Sci-fi should not be for the whole family. It should
be for adults if it wants to survive. Once Upon a Time took the family spot and
is doing well with it.

In the first scene, we see a man named Ben and his wife
living in Chicago. They have a young son named Danny and an older daughter,
Charlie. Ben realizes “it’s about to happen” and calls his brother, Miles, just
before the power goes out for good. If that happened, we would immediately run
to the grocery store with a pick-up truck and start loading in food cans.
Weapons would be next. Fifteen years later, Ben’s wife is dead and his new
girlfriend, Maggie, is the town doctor. Oh yeah, the town. Ben is seemingly the
leader of a little settlement where they grow lots of corn, and catalogue
model Katniss-esque tomboy Charlie is supposed to watch over her asthmatic
little brother, who does something stupid within the first 15 minutes.

A militia containing Gustavo Fring rides
into town to take Ben away and find out where his brother Miles is. Danny
interferes and Ben is killed. Danny is kidnapped. Charlie was chilling in the
woods by herself the whole time. Gus Fring works for the militia’s leader,
General Monroe, a power-hungry guy looking for a way to get technology back so
that he can monopolize it. Charlie sets out to find her uncle with Maggie and a
pudgy, nerdy guy named Aaron. Aaron has the necklace thing that Ben gave him,
and it’s probably the key to turning the power back on.

On the way, they are attacked by rapists, but Maggie
poisons them (we love her already), and a mysterious, hot archer shoots one off of Charlie. Charlie
trusts him and lets him join their band. They make it to a hotel in Chicago
where they find Miles, who refuses to go with them to get Danny. Mysterious
Archer Guy betrays them and leads the militia to Miles. Miles kills almost all
of the baddies, and Charlie comes back at the last second to help. Mysterious
Archer Guy intentionally fails to kill Charlie. He has a crush. Miles goes with
Charlie and the others. At the end, we find out that Monroe used to be Miles’s
Marine buddy. Also, Ben isn’t the only one with a necklace giving the ability
to turn on the power.

We’re not impressed with Charlie’s acting, especially
when she was crying to her uncle. She’s lucky to have those eyes though. Her
pupils always seem dilated. It’s weird that her eyes were kind of green when
she was a kid and blue as an adult. We like that Charlie open-minded and
trusting, and that the paranoia she was raised with didn’t completely brainwash
her. Yeah, it’s going to get her in trouble, but it gives her a soft side. We like
that her father saw her as the more capable child. Even though he wasn’t on the
show long, Ben treated Charlie convincingly, like a father would really treat his
oldest. At least they aren’t trying to pass Charlie off as 16. If her brother
is 19, she’s got to be around 24 or 25.

Miles is a dick, but he's bad ass. We liked
the big action scene near the end. We were surprised and grateful that Danny escaped
for a while. It led to interesting things (the woman with power), and it kind of
redeemed him a little. He’s not completely useless. When we saw Gus Fring, we wondered
who on Earth could be even scarier than him, since he’s not the boss. Monroe is.
We wouldn’t say Monroe is scarier yet. We haven’t seen much of him. He hardly utters
a word. He’s really damn hot though. We’re going to keep watching this show,
for now. We aren’t blown away, but we were entertained and we would call this a
solid beginning. We don’t know where the show intends to go from here, but the
first chapter was more than promising. It has to stay quality for about five episodes
in order for us to really trust it though. We’ve been burned by sci-fi...and JJ Abrams...before.

About the bloggers

Ern is a lawyer. Ern's all-time favorite shows are LOST and Breaking Bad. Other favorites include Homeland and South Park. She also enjoys opera, water skiing, arguing, and movies. Ern responds to most of the comments, because they go directly to her phone. Ern also starts most of the posts and leaves them half done, as drafts, for Leeard to finish. As far as international visitors go, Ern is excited to see visitors from Germany, the UK, and Israel.

Leeard is a technology consultant and a nice Italian Catholic girl. Leeard's all-time favorite show is Gilmore Girls, but her favorite shows on right now are Game of Thrones, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries. Leeard can do your taxes, loves sports, and has an insane amount of pop culture knowledge. Leeard is excited to see visitors from Russia and Poland because she speaks conversational Russian and Polish (and Spanish).

We started this blog because of our insane addictions to TV. We thought that, while we were "wasting our lives," we would at least get writing and thinking practice out of it.